A Global Agreement on Climate Change

Rich countries are also affected by climate change: The 2003 heat wave killed more than 70,000 people in Europe.

Negotiations taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009 will bring together countries from around the world. The Copenhagen conference will focus on formulating a successor to the current treaty on climate change, the Kyoto Protocol. Negotiated in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol went into full force in 2005. It set binding limits on CO2 emissions for some countries; 35 industrialized nations agreed to cut their emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The Kyoto commitment period ends in 2012. What will a post-Kyoto global agreement on climate change look like? This is what the Copenhagen negotiations are supposed to answer, or begin to answer, since the process of finalizing an agreement will culminate in 2012.

Formal discussions of a successor to the Kyoto Protocol began in Bali in December 2007. Countries have been in “full negotiating mode” since December 2008.¹ The negotiations hold both promise and apprehension. One promising sign: the United States is back as an engaged participant. In 2001, the Bush administration withdrew from negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol, and the United States never ratified the treaty. That lack of engagement has arguably been the single greatest constraint on the international climate change effort.² The Obama administration has indicated that it wants to play a leading role in the next round of negotiations; officials have been working since the beginning of the administration to establish U.S. leadership credentials. In his inaugural address, the president announced to the world, “With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to … roll back the specter of a warming planet.”

Since then, the president and Congress have taken important steps to convince the rest of the world that the United States is serious about climate change. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included $90 billion for development and deployment of clean energy technology.  In June 2009, the House of Representatives passed the America Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (also known as the Waxman-Markey bill), and later in the year the Senate began deliberations on its own bill. The House bill provides $190 billion in investments in new clean energy technologies and in energy efficiency, clean coal technology, electric and other advanced technology vehicles, and basic scientific research and development.³

The bill also authorizes resources to support an international climate change adaptation program. It establishes a framework for an international technology transfer fund; developing countries who are party to an international climate agreement to which the United States is also a party would be eligible. Another key provision of the American Clean Energy and Security Act is funding to conserve tropical forests—deforestation of tropical forests is responsible for approximately one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.⁴ Overall, the Waxman-Markey legislation is indispensible in making the case that the United States is a serious negotiating partner on climate change.

Onlookers are apprehensive as the Copenhagen negotiations approach because disagreements between developed and developing countries have been sounding like a game of diplomatic “chicken.” The prospects for an agreement appear dim unless countries can settle on key components of the framework. It’s a high-stakes game to be sure. Scientists say the point of no return for averting catastrophic climate change is drawing near, perhaps as soon as 2020.⁵

The essential elements of a post-2012 comprehensive climate change agreement include limits on greenhouse gases by the major emitting countries; transfer of clean energy technologies from countries that have already developed these to countries that have not; and support for climate change adaptation in poor, vulnerable countries. To these three we would add a fourth element: the need to explicitly bring agriculture, which is currently a major contributor to greenhouse emissions and potentially a major carbon “sink,” into the climate change deliberations.

In This Section

• Limits on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Issues